what musician or composer do you feel really pushed the boundaries of what sampling can be for their genre?
I don't think you're really going to find anything for the dub genre, because dub wasn't about sampling as much as it was using a certain set of source material (multitrack recordings of reggae songs) and manipulating it into a new work (the "dub" version). Dub can be seen as the birth of the remix, but it really doesn't have much to do with sampling. As for hip hop and pop music , I suggest sticking with the Dust Brothers, the studio guys behind the Beastie Boys' "Paul's Boutique" and later Beck's "Odelay." Whereas most hip hop producers, including the bomb squad, stuck to a rather small palette of funk and rare groove for their source material, the Dust Brothers sampled EVERYTHING under the sun. You've got songs produced by them that throw sitar and tabla jams over electro beats, and scratch in bossa nova vocal stabs and parts of TV show jingles. They've also demonstrated the ability to cross genres, producing the Beasties, Beck, and hell, even Hanson, all while bringing that insanely diverse sampling ethos. This isn't to downgrade great hip hop producers that just stuck to the funky basics for their sampling canon, but you didn't exactly see the Bomb Squad crossing genres or straying far from their funk collection. The Dust Brothers just seem to put absolutely ridiculous combinations of sounds and styles together and make them work- which is really what sampling is about. Prince Paul is another good example of a producer who samples indiscriminately from all genres and pop culture sources, but his body of work never strayed from straight hip hop. andrew